UT Student Helps Make the Vote Count

With the election season in full swing, Mariah Robinson is literally on the front lines of the electoral process.

A UT junior, Robinson is an intern for the Pinellas County Supervisor of
Elections Office, where she works to educate voters about the
registration and voting process.

In her role she assists both the office’s communications director as well as the voter education coordinator.

“Few people may realize how much planning goes into a single election,” Robinson said.

Robinson
began working at the Supervisor of Elections Office this past summer.
On the job, Robinson’s duties are many and varied, but all involve
communicating important election-related information to the public and
educating voters about the election process.

“I love the responsibility,” Robinson said. “I get to come in every day and work on assignments that matter.”

When elections officials statewide announced that voting this year would
take place using optical scan voting machines, it was Robinson’s task
to create a poster and online materials to explain how this method of
voting worked.

Robinson has also been put in touch with many
local elected officials. Recently she helped produce brief video
messages for the office’s Web site from several local candidates. The
experience, she said, gave her a glimpse at the more personal side of
the candidates for sheriff, county commission and Statehouse.

She also regularly coordinates with the media, including recently for a
story about a woman who visited the office in order to register to vote
–for the first time – on her 80th birthday.

Having worked for class credit during the summer, Robinson was asked to
stay as an intern through the end of the election season. She commutes
to work daily from the UT campus to the office in Largo, all while
juggling classes and on-campus responsibilities as a resident assistant
and Gateways mentor.

“It creates stressful days, but it’s worth it,” she said. “My internship
experience has given me a sense of direction as I now pursue a career
in communication for not-for-profits.”

A psychology major, Robinson recently decided to pursue a minor in
communication, due in part to her experience with the supervisor of
elections. The internship has allowed her to apply many of the academic
lessons of her psychology studies to a real-world setting, she said.

“I
get to see how psychology can help you interact with people,” she said.
“Before, psychology was just an abstract idea for me. The internship
opened up how to apply it.”